Quick Cryptic 1202 by Flamande

Author   william_j_sPosted on Categories Quick Cryptic

I’m standing in for Jeremy, who’s back for a double starting next week.

A nice mixture of difficulty in the clues, I thought. The first few across and down clues went in straight away, normal service then resumed (bouncing around the grid, picking off a few easier ones), before finally coming to a halt in the SE corner. I took a while unscrambling 12dn, as I was looking for a literal material, which then illuminated the way forward at 22ac (my COD). LOI the rather unsatisfying 16dn.

Definitions underlined.

Across

1 Medical magazine showing short Greek character stabbed by weapon (3,6)
THE LANCET – all but the last letter of (short) THETa (Greek character) surrounding (stabbed by) LANCE (weapon).
6 Regularly tell off mischievous child (3)
ELF – every other letter from (regularly) tElL oFf.
8 Supporter of Chinese communist, not a little wet (5)
MOIST – MaOIST (support of Chinese communist) without the ‘a’ (not a).
9 Assorted bones: a good source of food for Dobbin? (7)
NOSEBAG – anagram of (assorted) BONES, with A then G (good).
10 Hooligan‘s meal still to be cooked? Correct (8)
TEARAWAY – TEA (meal), RAW (still to be cooked), and AY (correct).
11 Musical chairs, first and last to go (4)
HAIR – remove the first and lest letters from (first and last to go) cHAIRs.
13 Computer program to carry out check on bank’s customer? (11)
SCREENSAVER – lateral double definition.
17 Clue penned by wordsmith in Times (4)
HINT – hidden inside (penned by) wordsmitH IN Times.
18 People next to trail in driving event (4,4)
DRAG RACE – RACE (poeple) next to DRAG (trail).
21 We say he disposed of rubbish (7)
EYEWASH – anagram of (disposed of) WE SAY HE.
22 Second class travel for new union member? (5)
BRIDE – B (second class) and RIDE (travel).
23 Alcoholic drink — nothing for abstainer to imbibe (3)
TOT – TT (tee-totaller, abstainer) surrounding (to imbibe) O (nothing).
24 Extremely desperate newspaper editor is despondent (9)
DEPRESSED – first and last letters from (extremely) DesperatE, PRESS (newspaper) and ED (editor).

Down
1 Fruit: Thomas has cut tiny amount (6)
TOMATO – TOM (Thomas) with all but the last letter of (cut) ATOm (tiny amount).
2 Girl Americans will take to heart (5)
ERICA – hidden in the centre of (will take to heart) amERICAns
3 Mammal climbing Sicilian mountain consumed last of water (8)
ANTEATER – ETNA (Sicilean mountain) reversed (climbing), ATE (consumed), then last letter of wateR.
4 Sailing vessel tossed about in E China ports (9,4)
CONTAINER SHIP – anagram of (tossed about) IN E CHINA PORTS.
5 Time to request a bit of work (4)
TASK – T (time) and ASK (request).
6 Hug half of them, along with a further couple (7)
EMBRACE – half of the letters from thEM, with BRACE (a couple).
7 Imagine is number one, perhaps (6)
FIGURE – double definition, the second by example.
12 Close to Ghent, Belgian spins material (8)
TANGIBLE – anagram of (spins) the last letter of (close to) ghenT with BELGIAN.
14 Agree Tories entice? Not half (7)
CONSENT – CONS (Tories) and the first half of (not half) ENTice.
15 Danger that overwhelms some soldiers (6)
THREAT – THAT surrounding (overwhelms) RE (Royal Engineers, some soldiers).
16 Story of a famous footballer? (6)
LEGEND – lateral double definition. Though why footballer, I don’t know.
19 Without love, a day is so long (5)
ADIOS – surrounding (without) O (love), A, D (day) and IS.
20 Mother and I finally employed someone to help out (4)
MAID – MA (mother) with I and last letter of (finally) employeD.


34 comments on “Quick Cryptic 1202 by Flamande”

  1. I thought this was going to be easy, with the gimme of 1ac to start off with, then ELF and MOIST. But I had trouble with TEARAWAY, as well as putting in ROAD RACE at 18ac. 6:23.
  2. Had all but 6 done in about 5 minutes then took 25 to get the rest: drag race, eyewash, tangible, adios, legend and LOI bride which needed an alphabet trawl.

    Agree about legend, i was looking for best and even dalglish !

    cod bride or screensaver.

    Edited at 2018-10-17 05:58 am (UTC)

  3. 16 minutes with time lost over the non-existent footballer at 16dn and the sailing vessel at 4dn which has no sails. Also, and very rarely for me (which is why I mention it today), I stopped the clock before I’d parsed 10ac as I was already into the red as far as solving time was concerned. Having eventually biffed the answer, I didn’t see how it worked until I’d put the puzzle aside for a while and returned to it later for another look.

    Edited at 2018-10-17 05:10 am (UTC)

  4. 5.10 but with, for reasons known only to the strange ramblings at the back of my mind, AMISS at 19d.

    Back up to 20 errors in the last month now – so that’s looking good for November 3rd…..Not.

  5. I think the setter may be having fun in referencing recently retired footballer, John Terry, beloved by all bar the most discerning Chelsea fan and looked upon somewhat differently by fans of a different colour, who was known as ‘Captain, Leader, Legend.’
  6. I also took some time to see what was going on at 10a, but eventually saw it and the parsing. I’d posited TEA as the first 3 letters early on, but the rest of it eluded me until it was my LOI. THE LANCET gave me a flying start. I was slightly over my target at 10:31. I was delayed by SCREENSAVER too, despite it having come up before. Thanks Flamande and William.
  7. As with many other contributors, I made a quick start but then was held up at the end by three or four, finally limping in at 29 minutes. The random mention of footballer in 16d didn’t help!
  8. I thought this was going to be my best ever but was totally thrown by stupidly putting in Antelope for 3d and rushing on before parsing it properly. This made the NW corner and Screensaver impossible. I have no excuse for that. Some very good clues but some difficult ones – Legend and Tearaway (my LOI) for example and, to my mind, the ‘sailing’ in 4d was totally redundant and frankly misleading. I confess to having biffed Eyewash without parsing it. Thanks to Flamande for a wolf in sheep’s clothing of a puzzle and to william for his blog. John M.

    Edited at 2018-10-17 09:03 am (UTC)

  9. 16 minutes for me too, with 16d LOI. In the end it went in unparsed, and is still obscure, but I did wonder if a foot ball (ball of one’s foot) was a leg end (end of one’s leg), but that leaves ‘famous’ as redundant, so can’t be right. Having said that, and just checked my online Chambers, LEGEND is also defined as an adjective meaning very famous, so maybe it’s a kind of triple definition – but I don’t really believe that myself – lol

    Edited at 2018-10-17 08:34 am (UTC)

  10. Rushed through in 6 minutes, with typo check, but many only parsed post submit – came to same conclusion as therotter about the footballer in 16dn, and agree with oldblighter on 4dn.
  11. 17 minutes for me with LOI Tearaway and prior to that Screensaver.
    I had the same issues as others: paused over Legend (thought of leg end etc);nearly wrote Antelope at 3d ( a near miss); struggled a bit to find definition in 10a.
    COD to 13a. David
  12. 45 minutes, and pleased to have finished at all. ‘Sporting Legends’ is a well known phrase, but not confined to footballers, and there is a list called ‘FOOTBALL LEAGUE 100 LEGENDS’ but frankly that clue was pretty obscure for a QC. ‘Sailing vessel’ = CONTAINER SHIP, well strictly speaking yes I suppose. Fortunately SHIP was obvious and the rest fell into place with a couple of checkers.. FOI 1ac, so a good start. LOI TEARAWAY – took some figuring out. COD SCREENSAVER – enjoyed that.
    PlayUpPompey
    1. No strictly speaking a sailing vessel is one with sails – pretty rare in container ships. It can be stretched to e.g setting sail in other vessels which don’t actually have any sails, but actually calling a container ship a sailing vessel is twaddle

      Edited at 2018-10-17 06:22 pm (UTC)

  13. I was barbecued by Flamande today, a full five Kevins (count them: FIVE) and just miles off it. 16dn (my LOI which took ages) must have something to do with the end of the leg but I’m darned if I can make sense of it and it seems no-one else can either, so that’s going down as a poor clue in my book. Other difficult but at least ultimately comprehensible clues were TEARAWAY and ADIOS.

    EYEWASH was a very well concealed anagram and I liked the John Lennon reference in 7dn so that gets my COD.

    Hard yards today, crikey. Thanks to Flamande (I suppose …) and William (genuinely).

    Templar

  14. I did not finish as I could not get legend or tearaway. I have a problem with screensaver as I am not sure it is a computer programme. For example my screensaver is a picture of my grandchild. The mechanism to create a screensaver may be a programme but the screensaver itself is not Anyway that’s my excuse for not getting it! Nakrian kickiat
  15. One problem with having nice “in-group” jargon is that you have to keep explaining it.

    What, may I ask, is a “kevin”.

    2. Kevin regularly posts the quickest, or at least one of the quickest, times. So some solvers use his time to benchmark themselves.
      PlayUpPompey
  16. DNF SE corner. For 19d I was stuck on a day of the week with ‘o’ removed to mean ‘long’. For 22a obsessed with trade union acronyms and for 16d not being interested on football, assumed it was footballer’s name eg Pele, Best all I could think of.
  17. Slightly held up by doing the same as 2 of our commenters – ROADRACE and ANTELOPE, before I saw sense. I liked TEARAWAY and LEGEND. 6:12.
  18. Why is a mischievous child an elf? It was a write in from the wordplay, but I have never seen it used that way – imp certainly, but not elf. Like others wondered why ‘sailing’ for a ship which is anything but, and why only footballers can be legends. I thought Evita was a perfectly good answer to 2d a girl taken to (South) American hearts, and I parsed 1d as ‘cut tiny amount’ = A TOuch.
    All in all a puzzle where the solution raises another set of puzzles!
    Paulw
    1. Thought it was just going to be me nit getting erica. Last empty squares for an age so stuck eliza and crossed my fingers despite the answer staring me in the face.

      A reminder to stay vigilant!

    2. ELF
      SOED: A child, esp. one that is wilful.
      Collins: a mischievous or whimsical child.
      Chambers: a mischievous child.
  19. I had a similar experience to many others it seems. Issues with LOI 16d and slow to see what was happening with ADIOS and TEARAWAY. Completed in 19.39.
    Thanks for the blog
  20. Chugged through in about 15 mins. Some dodgy cluing for my taste. Container ship obviously wrong, a screensaver is not a computer program by any reasonable definition (quite apart from being 2 words), and an atom is not a small amount, you can’t actually have a single atom of anything except a few rare gasses in a laboratory. Just the usual crop of amusing mistakes when QC goes anywhere near anything vaguely scientific or technical.
  22. After yesterday’s first post, delighted to have finished what, for me, was a challenging QC. Don’t think I would have completed this level a few weeks back. Did most of the puzzle within an hour and then sat half-looking at Tearaway, bride and legend all evening (while watching Corrie!). Suddenly got tearaway and then the other 2. Thanks to Flamande and bloggers

    Ged

  23. Sadly it would appear that Flamande (aka David Crossland) died over the weekend: http://www.fifteensquared.net/2018/10/30/david-crossland-dac-rip/ He was perhaps better known as an Indy setter in his Dac persona, as well as a setter (uncredited, of course) for the main Times cryptic, but in all guises his puzzles were notable for their surface readings. Very sad to read of his passing.

    Edited at 2018-10-30 09:44 pm (UTC)

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